The Road to Tsuchikage
by Lucillia
Summary: An infant Naruto was brought to Iwagakure where he was raised ignorant of his origins and heritage. Like his canon counterpart, he too wants to protect his village, gain acknowledgement, and become a Kage. Answer to Hecktols' Stolen Hero Challenge.
1. Prologue: Setting the Scene

**Author's Note: **I've decided to take Hektols up on the Stolen Hero challenge that I noticed on his profile. Now here's the story...

&!&!&!&

You see a blond boy of about twelve years of age in bright orange dangling from a cliff by a rope. The boy is busy painting graffiti onto the side of said cliff. Ah, you say to yourself, it is Naruto on the day he painted the Hokage monument. The scene pulls back, and your brain breaks, for despite the fact that it is indeed Uzumaki Naruto who was doing the painting, the setting is completely wrong. For one, the friendly, brightly painted buildings of Konoha are nowhere in sight. Nor are the multitude of trees that live in and around the village. Instead, young Naruto is painting on a cliff between two narrow waterfalls in a desolate mountain range. As the scene pulls back even further, you realize that behind the boy is a city of stone towers that look as if they had been carved from the natural rock formations that jut up from the surrounding landscape. Many of these towers rest on cliffs, and are connected to each-other by a network of bridges. The tallest of these is a massive structure with a conical roof.

The entire effect of the city and its surroundings is a rather ominous and foreboding one.

It is at that point that you realize that rather than the familiar tracksuit you've come to know and possibly love, Naruto is wearing something that more closely resembles an orange Karate gi which is tied closed with a black belt. That, and the fact that Naruto's hair is longer and pulled back into a low spiky ponytail rather than in its usual short mess.

It is at this point that you may ask "What is this, and where are we?".

The answer to these questions my friend is that this is an Alternate Universe, and we are standing just outside of the hidden village of Iwagakure which rests in the land of Earth. Thinking about exactly where outside of Iwa we are standing to get this spectacular view would best be avoided, as it probably is best best to ignore the fact that there is several hundred feet of air between us and the nearest piece of solid ground at this point.

If you're ignoring the lack of ground in your surprise at finding Naruto in Iwa when he should be several hundred miles away painting the Hokage Monument in Konoha right about now, the next question you may ask is "How did this come to be?".

That my friend is a long story, a bit over thirteen years long if you must know. I will however give you the short version which contains all of the important highlights.

Shortly before Obito died on the infamous mission to the Kannabi Bridge which had turned the tide of the Third Shinobi War in Konoha's favor, he had managed to accidentally spill the beans on the marriage that Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina were trying to keep quiet about so neither would be used as leverage against the other, as they both had powerful enemies. With the cat out of the bag, it was obvious to the entire village who the father was when it was noticed that Kushina was pregnant, and the entire village anticipated the birth of the Yondaime Hokage's son much as they had anticipated the birth of the Sandaime's son fifteen years earlier.

On the evening of October 10, Uzumaki Kushina was almost secretly snuck out of Konoha, and you pretty much know what happened at that point as it was the same in the universe we follow in Manga and Anime except for the fact that someone noticed Kushina pausing to talk to Uchiha Mikoto.

It is what happened afterward that was so different. With the village knowing who Naruto's parents were, most of them hailed the boy as a hero as was his father's wish. A small minority of the villagers, mainly those who had lost loved ones in the Kyuubi attack, hated the boy, but the rest of the villagers who didn't hail the boy as a hero were indifferent to his existence and more concerned with rebuilding the village and getting their lives back on track.

Every clan head clamored to adopt the child whose mere existence had saved the village. Every clan head save Uchiha Fugaku that was. Fugaku, who had known what Naruto's mother was despite the fact that it was supposed to be a secret, called for the boy's execution out of fear of what would happen if someone broke the seal that kept the Kyuubi contained again. It was a rather logical fear, since he didn't exactly know what had caused Kushina's seal to break, and, in his view, if they found someone else to seal the Kyuubi in after it was freed, there was good odds that whatever party released the Kyuubi the last time would just do so again and again until they ran out of either village or hosts for the Kyuubi.

Fugaku's call for the boy's execution increased the villagers' suspicions of the Uchiha clan's involvement in the Kyuubi attack, especially when his call for execution of the Yondaime's son was coupled with an eyewitness account of Uzumaki Kushina speaking with his wife shortly before she departed the village for the last time. Things naturally got worse for the Uchiha clan, much worse, especially after what came next.

Sensing a golden opportunity, a spy from Iwagakure who had initially been sent in on a long-term assignment at the end of the Third Shinobi World War spirited Naruto away as he was being brought to his new home in the Nara clan compound and faked his death, killing the guards who were bringing the child to his future home under the cover of darkness as there had been threats made against the infant, leaving no witnesses.

The village was shocked and horrified at the senseless "murder" of the Yondaime's son, and public opinion turned against those who had been against Naruto. Suspicion immediately fell on the Uchiha clan, but since there had been no proof of their involvement in the heinous act, none of them had been arrested for the crime. That didn't stop the village from finding them guilty of both siccing the Kyuubi on the village and murdering the child who had stopped the Kyuubi's rampage and held it back within himself in the court of public opinion, and sentencing them to a very thorough shunning.

While the Uchiha clan were becoming the village pariahs, Naruto was carried to his new home in Iwa. The Tsuchikage was delighted to have the opportunity to raise the son of the infamous Yellow Flash as a loyal Iwa ninja, and had richly rewarded the operative who had brought him.

As the Sandaime Tsuchikage Onoki was making arrangements for the education and indoctrination of the small infant who retained the name Naruto because the Tsuchikage thought it was cute, but hadn't been given a family name, one of the Yondaime's many enemies who had lost three brothers on the battlefield spread the origins of the infant that the Tsuchikage had just taken in to the entire village. Seeing that this could be a problem, especially amongst the generation that Naruto would be growing up to fight alongside, the Tsuchikage made a law that forbade the villagers from revealing Naruto's origins to anyone, including Naruto, on pain of death.

Naruto spent the next twelve years growing up almost completely alone. He did have the Sandaime Tsuchikage who viewed him as an extra grandchild, and Kurotsuchi the Tsuchikage's granddaughter who was fond of him, and Deidara who tolerated his presence, and Han who liked him well enough since they shared similar burdens, and Roshi before he left on a trip around the world, but for the most part, they had their own lives as well and were quite often too busy to spend time with him. This had led to Naruto acting out to get attention from the village as a whole. Positive, negative, at that point, it didn't really matter to him as long as someone noticed him. Most often this attention-seeking behavior was displayed in a series of highly creative pranks. Other times, he would tell all and sundry that he'd become the Tsuchikage when the "Old Man" was finally ready to give up the hat.

Now that the stage is set, I shall put up the invisible fourth wall which we shall hide behind and observe...


	2. A Very Naruto Graduation Day

Naruto grinned as he made a mark that the entire village would have to see. Nobody would be able to deny his greatness, not even Deidara-nii. Deidara-nii who had...who had...left. The brilliant smile that the Old Man had once told him that he liked to see after a day of difficult work dimmed slightly as he recalled his friend and mentor's departure less than a month before.

Ever since he'd been little, he'd been Deidara's Mini Me, and now there was no Deidara-nii to be a Mini Me to. There was no Deidara-nii to laugh at the pranks he pulled. There was no Deidara-nii to critique his art. There was no Deidara-nii to sneak him sweets and lead him on adventures when he was supposed to be studying. There was no Deidara-nii period. He'd stolen a forbidden jutsu, left the village, and became a terrorist bomber for hire so he could freely explore and explode his beloved art which the Old Man hadn't been too fond of.

Deidara-nii had been one of only two kids near his age to acknowledge his existence and play with him. Deidara-nii had also been a super awesome ninja who had to go on missions alot of the time, so most often he had been left alone with Kurotsuchi who had graduated the Academy last year, leaving him alone alone now since she was so busy with training and missions herself.

Han, Roshi, and the Old Man were nice to him, but it wasn't the same since they were grown-ups and didn't have all that much time for him, especially now that Roshi was gone on some sort of training mission. There had been times when he'd wished they would be parents to him, but they couldn't. They did spend some time with him when they weren't completely occupied with work though, and Han had been patient with him as he tried to figure out how to get him to channel the Kyuubi's Chakra.

That was another thing. He was the Jinchuriki of the most powerful of the biju, and he was a failure. The seal that kept the Kyuubi held within him had some sort of block on it that kept him from being able to directly channel the Kyuubi's Chakra. Nobody wanted to risk removing that block in case doing so ended up doing something horrible like releasing the Kyuubi. If the Kyuubi was released, it was gone, since nobody other than the person who had sealed the Kyuubi in him had ever managed to seal the creature who could cause landslides and tsunamis with the merest flick of its tail away. The seal experts who had been studying his seal since he was a baby had made very little headway in deciphering it. Much of the lore of the Uzumaki sealing arts had been lost with the destruction of the village of Uzushiogakure.

As he added a splash of color to his depiction of a rather inappropriate handsign which he'd painted a hundred feet tall on the cliff outside the Eastern wall of the village, a wisp of steam caught his eye.

Aw crap. It was Han.

The other Jinchuriki may have liked him, but that didn't mean that it made him any more merciful when he handed out punishments for his misbehavior. Sometimes, Han's punishments were a bit too harsh for the crime committed, and the Old Man had been forced to rescue him on a couple of occasions.

"Naruto, what are you doing?" Han asked when he reached his position, walking up the side of the cliff, which was something he had yet to learn how to do without throwing himself off of the surface he was climbing at the most inopportune moment.

"Art!" he chirped cheerfully, despite the feeling of dread that was sinking into the pit of his stomach.

"Why are you doing this...art now when you should be at the Academy preparing to take your Graduation Exam?" Han asked.

He found he couldn't look at his mentor as the last of the enthusiasm he'd had for this project faded away. There was a reason that he wasn't at the Academy Graduation Exam. It was the same reason that he had skipped out on the last two. It was because there was no point in his attending. The Instructors had even said so. Every day they said so when they told the class how much of an idiot and a failure he was. They were right too. He sucked at Taijutsu no matter how many extra lessons Deidara-nii and Kurostuchi-nee gave him. His Academy Ninjutsu was well below average, and he'd had to be taught some entirely different jutsu in order to be able to make clones. When it came to Genjutsu, well, don't get him started on Genjutsu.

Han apparently wasn't satisfied with his lack of answer, because the next thing he knew, he was being dragged to the Academy grounds at top speed, forcing the furnace in Han's armor to work harder which caused it to emit a steady stream of steam rather than a few occasional wisps. When they arrived at the testing grounds, the Exam had only been seconds away from being underway, which meant that he had arrived just in time to humiliate himself this year rather than being washed out and sent to live life as a civilian which was all he was good for for his third "failure".

He'd told everyone who'd listen to him that he'd become Tsuchikage, but the Tsuchikage was the greatest ninja in the whole world, and as everyone said, there was no way he'd ever be good enough. He wanted to be Tsuchikage like the Old Man with all his heart though. The best he could manage however was pretending that he didn't believe everyone was right until, for a while, he himself believed they were wrong. That always came crashing down though when reality invaded, like now. He couldn't be Tsuchikage if he wasn't a ninja.

Soon, far too soon for his liking, the test started. After he barely passed the running, aerobic, and acrobatic portions of the exam, it came to the parts he was no good at. Two of his ten kunai failed to hit the center of the targets like they always did. The Ninjutsu part of the exams came and he'd been forced to create a couple of mud clones since he couldn't do a standard bunshin to save his life. The Proctors accepted this substitution, barely. During the Taijutsu portion of the exam, he waited for his name to be called, last as always since he didn't have a family name. He considered running away and quitting right then and there. If he couldn't beat Deidara-nii in a spar, how would he be able to pass this portion of the exam?

He, the Chunin who was supposed to be testing him, and the exam proctors were all surprised when he managed to take the Chunin down. When he did what he'd done to the Chunin with Deidara-nii, Deidara-nii had always pulled some sort of dirty trick out of his sleeve and brought him down instead.

As he stared down at the Chunin who was sitting there and rubbing his knee, he heard the one word he never thought he would hear in his entire life...

"Pass." one of the proctors behind him said as he threw something at him which glinted in the corner of his eye.

He caught the object, and found that it had been the thing he'd been coveting ever since he first knew what it was. It was a hitai-ate of his very own. The red material that was the color of blood felt smooth in his hands and the brand new plate on which the symbol of the village he had vowed to serve had been deeply etched gleamed in the sunlight. He briefly traced his finger over the paired rocks that symbolized the village of Iwagakure before putting on the headband that marked him as a shinobi of the rock.

There was something distinctly unpleasant in the smile that the proctors gave him as he proudly tied his new hitai-ate on.

Being too happy to care about such things, he shrugged this off. He'd become a ninja! Everyone had been wrong about him! He hadn't been a failure, and wouldn't be one in the future. One day, he would gain the acknowledgement of everyone in the village, and he'd learn how to unlock the Kyuubi's powers, and he would become Tsuchikage. Believe it!

His heart was still swollen to three sizes larger than normal as he headed home after the speech welcoming the graduates into the shinobi forces and his first order which was to show up in three days time so he would be assigned to his team had been given. He didn't live in the best of neighborhoods, but he wasn't a crevice dweller by any stretch of the imagination either, and he had his own apartment, which was more than any other kid his age could claim, even though it was lonely. Unlike his other classmates, there was nobody to greet him at home, and there would be nobody to congratulate him for his accomplishment. The best he had to look forward to was a cup of ramen, which wasn't very common in Iwa, making it a special treat that he could only indulge in during special occasions.

He usually took the back way to his home to avoid the glares of the other villagers. Today was no exception, since he didn't want anything to bring his mood down. It was as he was cutting through an alley a couple blocks from his apartment that he'd been stopped by a patrolling Chunin who had dropped from one of the roofs above.

"Take that off!" the Chunin growled, pointing at his new hitai-ate.

"No!" he yelled. It was his, and he'd earned it. He wasn't going to take it off unless the Tsuchikage himself ordered him to.

"You have no right to wear that!" the Chunin yelled, pulling out a kunai. "Not after what your father did to us!"

"My father?" he asked. He'd never heard anything about his parents before. The Old Man had told him that he'd been a foundling.

"The goddamned Yellow Flash!" the Chunin snarled as he charged at him.

He never reached him, since Han came out of nowhere and got him first.

"You weren't at home where I expected you to be, so I went looking for you." Han said as he pulled his sword out of the man who had been about to kill him.

He stood there shivering, unable to hear anything else Han said as the man cleaned his sword and put it away. He didn't know what shook him up worse, the fact that a fellow Iwa shinobi had tried to kill him less than an hour after he'd become one, or what the man had said before he died.

He couldn't be that monster's son, could he?


	3. The Will of Stone

Naruto sat anxiously awaiting the arrival of his sensei a short distance away from his teammates. He'd been placed on a team with the Kujakuseki twins Yuki and Yusuke. Normally, being placed on a team with a pair of crevice dwellers wasn't a cause for celebration. He however was glad to actually be on a team with anybody, and to be given a chance to prove himself as an Iwa shinobi. His father had nearly ruined that for him before he was born.

Three days earlier, the Old Man had confirmed that he was indeed the offspring of the hated Yellow Flash who had crushed battalions of their ninja as if they were bugs.

The Old Man had apparently learned of the incident in which his paternity had been revealed to him from Han who had been trying to retrieve him in order to clean his "art" off of the cliff face where it had been left for all to see and fail to admire, and he had been called to the Old Man's office that evening, shortly after Han had reported the death of the Chunin who had attacked him.

Rather than visit in his office while he dealt with his massive pile of paperwork like they usually did, the Old Man took him over to the Stone Monument. The Stone Monument was the one place in Iwa that was safe from his graffiti. To disrespect the monument was to disrespect all it symbolized. He had learned that lesson as well as the lesson on the Will of Stone a long time ago, a lesson which he still held close to his heart...

_The stillness and almost reverent silence of the courtyard in which an ornate pedestal with a smooth gray river rock set upon it rested in a circular pool of water that held hundreds of rocks just like the one which rested on the pedestal which was surrounded by a tile border with an intricate design was broken by the sound of a small child's voice. _

_"Where are we?" the small blond child with almost impossibly wide blue eyes and whisker marks on his little round cheeks who couldn't have been older than four or five asked the short elderly man who accompanied him. The boy didn't seem as happy to be there as the old man was, and looked almost as if he'd expected to be somewhere else._

_"This is the Stone Monument." the the balding, grey haired old man with a red nose who was only a little bit taller than the boy replied. "It symbolizes the Will of Stone in Iwa."_

_"The will of stone?" the boy asked curiously._

_"The will of stone is the unmovable will of the shinobi of the village." the old man said. "It is the will to face adversity with determination, and to stand indomitable in the face of the enemy. Each of us will die one day just as that stone can be knocked off of that pedestal and replaced by one of the stones in the pool below without anyone really noticing, but the Will of Stone will continue as long as we carry it with us and pass it down to those who will come after." _

_The boy looked over at the monument with greater interest than he had been showing before._

Naruto had stood alongside the old Tsuchikage much as he had on that day several years before. He was now taller than the Old Man who had cared for him when others in the village hadn't, and whose office had often provided him with a safe refuge in which he'd whiled away many an hour over the years.

"Was the Yellow Flash really my father?" he had asked the Old Man after a moment of respectful silence in which he had contemplated the monument and its meaning as he had every time he'd seen it since the Old Man had first brought him here.

"Yes." the Old Man replied.

"Why?" he'd asked.

"Why what? Why take you in? Why raise you?" the Old Man asked. "It was an opportunity we couldn't afford not to take, especially since you were going to be raised as a weapon to be used against us."

"But, why didn't you tell me he was my father?" he'd yelled.

"Because it was a burden you didn't need." the Old Man replied sadly. "If you'd known, you would have been afraid to try to make friends because you would have been too afraid that they would reject you when they learned he was your father."

"When you were a baby, I made a law forbidding anyone who knew of your origins from telling anyone who didn't. I didn't want you to grow up isolated because of something you had no control over, but things didn't quite work out the way I had planned." the Old Man had continued. "Nobody can make a law or pass an order that will make people like them. The best you can hope for is that one day people will see the person that I have come to know and love."

"Because of your father, your path will be a difficult one. People hated and feared him not just because Death trailed in his wake, but also because before the war ended, he had done his best to break our spirit, to break our Will, and he had come close to doing so. It is because of this that you are hated and feared by the older generations, a hatred and fear that your generation has unfortunately picked up on from their parents and translated into disdain and dislike." the Old Man finished.

"Who was my mother?" he'd asked, after processing what the Old Man had told him.

"Her name was Uzumaki Kushina." the Old Man replied. "She was the one who sealed the Kyuubi inside of you at the cost of her and her husband's lives. People in Konoha claim that it was your father who had been a genius with seals who did it, but the seal has all of the hallmarks of a job done by an Uzumaki."

"Why did she do that?" he'd asked, horrified at the thought of a mother sealing a demon within her own child.

"The Kyuubi was rampaging through Konoha, and your parents sealed it away in order to save the village." the Old Man said. "The villagers hailed you as the hero who held back the monster after the deed was done, apparently at the behest of your father."

"They thought I was a hero?" he'd asked, amazed that anyone would think of him that way.

"It wouldn't have lasted if you'd stayed." the Old Man said. "The instant you did something that reminded them of the supposed attributes of the Kyuubi or seemed to fail to live up to your father's legacy, they would have turned on you, believing that you were failing in the job you never asked for. People were already calling for your execution the day you were born. It would have only been a matter of time before the right whispers reached the right ears and the previously unpopular idea of execution spread to the whole village."

He had stood there shaking at that point when everything became too much once again like it had been when that Chunin had died while trying to kill him for what that monster who had sired him had done to the place he'd called home for his entire life. He could easily see the Old Man's scenario happening. The people in Konoha followed the Will of Fire. Fire was fickle, and could just as easily turn back around and burn its wielder as it would his enemy. There had been incidents where someone whom the people of Konoha had practically worshiped as gods had been brought down and had their names spat upon practically the next day, Uchiha Madara and the rest of his clan being a prime example.

The worst part of such a situation would be that he would have grown up believing himself to be loved, and not seen the blow coming from the people who he thought cared for him until it was too late.

As he stood there overwhelmed by all he had learned, the Old Man wrapped his arm around his shoulders, and offered him comfort. This was one of the reasons he loved the Old Man. When it really mattered, he always showed him that he cared.

Eventually, the both of them left the monument's courtyard and went to dinner where he'd been given as much ramen as he could eat to celebrate his graduation and induction into Iwa's shinobi force. After dinner, he had been taken to the cliff-side where he'd then been stuck cleaning up the mess he'd made earlier that day until dawn.

As he cleaned his "art" off of the cliff, he swore to himself that he would do everything he could to protect his village and uphold the Will of Stone. Through luck or fate, his father hadn't been able to destroy them, though he had come damn close, and he would never let anyone else come anywhere near as close to doing so. When he was Tsuchikage, he wouldn't let anyone threaten his home.

It was now three days later, and he was sitting with his new teammates waiting as the seconds ticked towards the appointed hour in which their new sensei would arrive.

Kujakuseki Yuki and Yusuke who would be his teammates until they took their first Chunin Exam weren't waiting nearly as quietly as he was. The two identical looking boys who had messy black hair, eyes that were as green as the malachite that their families were named after, and skin that was either very deeply tanned or naturally dark, were each trying to shove the other off of the rock that they had seated themselves on. They giggled as one or the other of them quickly slid across the rock, trying to push his brother over the edge.

At the precise time they were told he would, their new sensei shunshined in. It was Han.

Upon seeing that his new sensei was Han, who was someone he knew and cared about, and knew cared about him, Naruto was torn between elation and dread. Elation because he knew that Han would treat him fairly, and wouldn't hate him since he already didn't. Dread because it was Han, and he never got away with anything when he was around, and he was going to be even harder on him now that he was actually a Ninja.

The future may or may not be totally awesome from here on out.

"I have your first mission. Be ready in five minutes." Han said as he tossed an actual mission scroll at him.

Who was he kidding? The future was going to be totally awesome!


	4. Rumors of War and the Akatsuki

Naruto groaned as he rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Even with the rumors of a possible war with Suna being on the horizon, the Genin were still all given D ranks do do around the village and the surrounding area. He was told that that was how it was for new Genin across the entire continent, and that after he and his team as a whole had proven their responsibility in these tasks, they would be given more difficult missions. This mission, like the first mission he'd received was to create more topsoil for farming, as it had a tendency to blow away each year, which meant using certain Earth Jutsus that had been created for this purpose.

He sucked at Earth Jutsus. Royally. It was almost as if his Elemental Affinity, whichever it was, was completely opposite to Earth or something. But, that didn't mean that he could get out of the mission he'd been assigned to. It just meant that he'd have to work at least twice as hard at his task than just about everyone else, including his teammates who had taken to it like a duck to water.

In Earth Country, the most common Elemental Affinity was unsurprisingly Earth, just as Fire was in Fire and Lightning was in Lightning and so forth. That didn't mean that everyone had Earth for a primary affinity however. Those who didn't have such an affinity often had to work several times as hard as their counterparts who did as most of Iwagakure's Jutsu were Earth based.

Eventually, after he had become sunburnt, exhausted, and had been frustrated to no end, the task was done, and he and his teammates were allowed to go home. As he wandered through the village, the whispers that surrounded him weren't about him this time which was rather unusual in and of itself, but about Suna, which seemed to be the topic on everybody's lips these days. There had been rumors that Suna had been increasing their troop numbers and preparing to field an army.

This was particularly worrisome, as the first place that Suna would be likely to attack with such an army would be Iwa. Wind and Earth countries were very close to each-other, and border skirmishes were common. If Suna attacked Iwa, Konoha would be brought in on Suna's side, due to the Konoha/Suna alliance. Neither country would hesitate in crushing Iwa if given an opportunity. Suna were their traditional enemies, and Konoha had been their biggest enemy during the last war. There were still a large number of bad feelings on either side, especially on theirs since Konoha had decimated their forces, more than thirteen years later.

As he showered, prepared and ate his dinner, and got ready for bed, he found himself wondering if he would be in the middle of a war this time next year. While he would like to earn a name for himself on the battlefield, a name of his own that would make his fellow villagers forget his father's, he was also afraid of what such a war would entail. He'd heard that in wartime, a ninja was liable to come back crippled, or even not at all.

The next morning, he decided to stop worrying about a war that might not even happen and head over to the Tower to visit Kurotsuchi since it was his day off, and they hadn't seen each-other in a while. He and the Tsuchikage's granddaughter had been friends for as long as he could remember. It had only been recently that their duties had separated them. Hopefully, they could make the time to hang-out and spar like they used to before Kurotsuchi had graduated the Academy today.

As he wandered the halls of the building that was Iwa's administrative center as well as the private residence of the Tsuchikage, he nearly ran into a man in a black cloak with red clouds on it. He'd heard about the Akatsuki before. They often did jobs for the Old Man that the local ninja couldn't get caught doing. He figured that they were here today because of Suna. He'd been told to stay away from them though.

"Sorry." he said to the man he'd nearly run into.

There were two men in the hallway. Both wore the heavy red and black cloaks that were the trademark of the Akatsuki, and wide hats that obscured their features. Both men were tall, but one was about fifteen centimeters taller than the other. The taller of the two had a wrapped sword strapped to his back.

"Naruto?" the shorter of the two men, the man he'd run into, asked in an almost unbelieving tone.

"Do I know you?" he asked.

"No, but if you're who I believe you to be, you should have." the man said almost sadly.

"Well then, I guess it's nice to meet you. My name's Naruto, what's yours?" he asked, squinting up at the man, his eyes trying to pierce the shadows that inhabited the narrow space between the brim of his hat and the collar of his cloak.

"My name's Hatake Kakashi." the man replied, sounding almost amused.

He let out an involuntary gasp as he backed away a step. The Copy-ninja Kakashi was an infamous missing-nin from Konoha. The man was the only surviving student of the Yondaime Hokage, and he was rumored to have killed his Uchiha teammate and stolen his Sharingan eye from him. Over four years ago, the man had gone on a rampage in the Uchiha district and slaughtered the entire Uchiha clan except for Uchiha Itachi who had fled the village, and a small boy who had been hiding at the time. It was said that Kakashi had stolen and copied over a thousand Jutsus.

When the Hatake moved forward as if to grab him or something, he stood there uncertain as to whether to stand his ground or to flee. While there was a flee-on-sight order for the man, they were standing in the middle of the Tsuchikage tower, and it wasn't as if the man would try anything. Would he?

"You see Kisame, this is why I don't give out my name." the man said as he decided that discretion was the better part of valor and that he should be several corridors away at this point in time.

&!&!&!&!&

In a small country called Wave, one Momochi Zabuza had been quietly eating his dinner. That had been until a young man in a mask went flying through the window of the tree house he was currently inhabiting and started packing his stuff.

"What are you doing Haku?" he asked the frantic boy who was throwing everything into a box, not caring about organization, or what he was putting into the box, as the kid had thrown in several kunai, a pair of dirty underwear, and some garbage during the few seconds he'd been watching him.

"We have to get out of here Zabuza-sama!" his panicked tool/apprentice/servant said as he sealed the box of random belongings into a storage scroll. "Konoha sent an invasion force. Apparently, they didn't take too kindly to our killing one of their Genin teams."

&!&!&!&

Two days later, Onoki studied the rather troubling report he received. Fire Country had just annexed one of its smaller neighbors, a small country called Wave which lay off the Fire Country coast. If Fire Country was seeking to expand its territory, he would have to make a move to stop their advance. This would be particularly difficult if his village ended up going to war with Suna however.

So far, Suna - which had been arming itself to a worrying degree - hadn't made any aggressive moves, but that could all change in an instant. Suna was being exceptionally closed-mouthed and worryingly vigilant, and his spies had not been able to get information on a possible date for an impending attack to him.

As much as he was loathe to do so, he would have to adopt a wait and see policy on both fronts. A stone was patient, and so too would he be, no matter how nerve wracking being patient was at the moment. If he moved too soon, it could all end in disaster.


	5. The Uchiha Briefly Steal the Show

While Naruto stood cowering before the infamous Copy-Nin, and Zabuza and Haku who had only survived to that point because another job that had required the services of skilled ninja had cropped up before Gato could dispose of them were fleeing Wave ahead of the invasion force that had been sent from Konoha in order to deal with Gato who'd overstepped his bounds so far it wasn't even funny, a young man made his way through the wilds of Water Country seemingly heedless of the danger a possessor of a Kekkei Genkai such as himself would be in. A young man named Uchiha Itachi.

The Uchiha teenager who wandered through Water Country seemingly aimlessly wore patched and frayed clothing that was common to travelers across the continent. Each item of clothing had been picked up second hand in a different country, and for a person who could tell the minor differences in styles, the boy's attire was practically a travelogue of his journey. The light green Uwagi he wore had been purchased in River Country, the dark blue Obi that tied it shut in Fire Country, the black ninja trousers in Kumogakure, the bandages that went from mid-shin to his ankles at a "Martial Arts" supply shop in Tea Country, and the plain civilian Waraji in Grass Country. The staff he used as a walking stick that he carried was the only souvenir of home he'd dared keep, and it had belonged to his maternal grandfather before him.

How Itachi had gotten into this situation had started twelve years before following the abduction of one Naruto, Jinchuriki to the Kyuubi no Yoko. Following the apparent death of the Yondaime's son, the Uchiha who had been calling for the boy's execution had been shunned by most of the rest of the village. With the near-complete shunning of the Uchiha clan by the village, Itachi - who was the most skilled child the Uchiha had seen in decades - became the great hope of the clan. It had been the hope of the clan that Itachi would lead them to greatness at some point in the future, and that through Itachi the Uchiha would regain the respect they had lost which was a great deal to place on the shoulders of a young child.

Itachi persevered however, climbing ever higher despite those in the village who wanted to hold him down. Though there were those who tried to sabotage his work, Itachi ended up graduating the Academy at age seven. Being of the younger generation, the Hokage allowed him to advance to the rank of Chunin despite the seeming moratorium that had been placed on Uchiha promotions at the age of ten. At the age of eleven, Itachi had been invited to join the ANBU.

To those who didn't know the why it had happened, Itachi's appointment to the ANBU when he was eleven seemed rather unusual, especially since he was Uchiha and the Uchiha were pretty much personae non gratae in Konoha at that point. The Sandaime had personally selected Itachi for the position because he had seen the loyalty that the boy held towards the village in spite of the expectations that had been heaped upon him by his family, and Itachi's father allowed this appointment because he'd seen it as an opportunity for his son to spy on the village and scout out weaknesses as he gained the trust of his fellow ANBU.

Though he was ANBU, he wasn't made Team Captain when he was twelve despite the fact that he appeared to have the necessary skills, and it was in the course of his duties as an ANBU that he was given an assignment that broke his heart, an assignment that he had been within days of following through on for the sake of the one who was most precious to him before he had backed out at the last minute, the assignment to kill his clan. It was in the course of preparing for that assignment that he had met and was trained by a masked man who called himself Madara.

The last straw for Itachi that had caused him to back out of the task he'd been given despite the cost of doing so had come when he had been strolling beside the Naka river and run into his favorite cousin Shisui. Normally, such an encounter would be considered a fortuitous one, but not on that day. That day, Shisui had been bleeding heavily from an empty eye socket, having just had one of his special Sharingan stolen from him by Shimura Danzo. Shimura Danzo who had ordered Itachi to kill his own family, an order which had been backed up by the Hokage.

It was in that moment as he spoke with his cousin who was about to commit suicide in order that the world would be deprived of his remaining eye which he knew that people would fight and kill over that something shifted inside Itachi, and he realized in that moment that come what may, the Uchiha were his family, and that he was a Uchiha first, in spite of all that that entailed. That evening, Itachi handed the Hokage and the Council his resignation and prepared himself to stand and die with his clan when the time came, knowing that there would be someone waiting in the wings to take the position of executioner that he'd refused in the eleventh hour.

That someone who was tasked with doing the job Itachi had been unable to was the familyless and near-friendless Hatake Kakashi who knew that he wouldn't be able to go home again if he did this, and used it to infiltrate an up and coming criminal organization called the Akatsuki so he could be Konoha's eyes and ears in the group. Aside from the fact that there was a chance that he would still be alive after the killing was done considering the fact that he possessed the near legendary Mangekyo Sharingan, it was basically a suicide mission because he would be dead, worse than dead, as far as the village was concerned.

On the night of the Massacre, Itachi who had stood ready to die with his clan came up with a desperate plan to save Sasuke at the very least. As the first screams rent the night, Itachi spirited his little brother away to the Naka shrine where he hid the child under the seventh tatami mat from the far right and prayed the boy wouldn't be found until after it was all over, and that he wouldn't be killed when he was found.

As Kakashi came bringing death from the East and another came bringing it from the West, Itachi found himself doing something unexpected. He fled. He fled not for his own life, but for the lives of everybody, including those who lay slumbering peacefully in their beds that night unknowing of the slaughter that was being carried out in their name, since he was one of the few who was aware of Uchiha Madara's continued existence and his eventual aims for the world.

Itachi ran away that day in order to live to fight Madara and bring him down another day.

During the four years since the Massacre, Itachi had been wandering the continent searching for any scraps he could find on Madara's whereabouts and his dealings. That search had led him to Kirigakure where - if the whispers of the ninja who had fled that place were to be believed - the Mizukage Yagura was being controlled by a masked ninja who matched Madara's description.

&!&!&!&!&

Several miles away from where Itachi was striding steadily across the Water Country landscape in a seemingly random pattern in order to shake any pursuers who might be curious as to his destination final, a masked man gazed out of a window near the top of the Mizukage tower at a vista that was currently free of the Uchiha whose name meant "Weasel". Tobi was bored with hiding behind Yagura, bored with being cooped up in this office and this building, and bored with his assignment. He couldn't wait for the day that he could hand the name and the fan back to Madara where they belonged, and they could finally lift this world from the hell it was in.

The only part of this assignment of controlling the Mizukage that he could be even remotely thankful for was that it kept him away from Kakashi. Thanks to a set of circumstances that remained beyond his control if he wanted his former identity to remain hidden, he and Kakashi were comrades once more, on the same team again and all that, and the only thing he felt each time he'd run into his fellow teammate was the overwhelming desire to kill the other man. Every time he ran into Kakashi who'd almost recognized him on the night of the Massacre when they'd met in the middle of the Uchiha district and he'd learned of the change in plans as he faced down his former teammate, his hands longed to drive themselves into Kakashi's chest as Kakashi's fist had driven itself into Rin's, and he longed to see that faintly stunned look Rin had that day on Kakashi's face.

The only reason Kakashi was still alive right now was because he was useful, and ninja of his caliber who were willing to join the Akatsuki and work with the others were in short supply.

One day however...

Now however, Tobi would sit there and be bored while the Mizukage sat there like the good little mindless puppet he was.

&!&!&!&!&

Far away in the village of Konoha, there was a boy, a boy who was alive because his brother hadn't been counted amongst the dead, his brother who knew secrets that could bring Konoha to its knees, his brother who had asked for only one thing before he had vanished...

For the most part, the village didn't know what to make of the boy. On the one hand, the boy's entire family had been slaughtered in a single night by a madman. Aunts, uncles, cousins, the lot. On the other however, the boy was a Uchiha. Not knowing what to make of the boy who didn't make pitying him easy, the villagers mostly ignored him. Being a Uchiha, being ignored out of bemusement was a step up from the cold treatment he'd received from said villagers for most of the first eight years of his life.

The solitary boy who had been hidden by his brother, missed by Kakashi and "Madara", and mostly ignored by the citizens of Konoha was named Uchiha Sasuke. He had no likes and a great many dislikes, no hobbies, and a dream. No, not a dream, an ambition. He was going to kill a certain someone, a certain someone named Hatake Kakashi.

One day, in the pursuit of that ambition, the boy would meet a blond named Naruto, a blond who would also meet Itachi and Tobi, and become entangled in their lives as Itachi and Sasuke ended up tangled in Tobi's plans, and all three of them would become entangled in his life. While all life was connected somehow, this particular knot would become tricky to unravel.

**Edited 4/30/13.**


	6. All in a Day's Work

**Author's Note: **For those of you who were somewhat...disappointed with my last chapter, I've gone back and edited it a bit. Hopefully the revised version will meet with your approval.

&!&!&!&!&

Sarutobi Asuma stood in the middle of the treetop compound which had formerly belonged to the shipping magnate Gato who'd tried setting up his own personal fiefdom right in Konoha's back yard. The missing-nin that the little bastard who'd squealed like a pig as he'd died had hired had run off like the coward he was, reputedly in the company of an accomplice. He would chase them to the ends of the Earth however, as this was beyond personal.

Despite the fact that he knew it was for revenge, his father had allowed him to temporarily leave his team behind in the care of another and lead the force that had technically invaded Wave, though they were going to be calling it a liberation force since Gato had apparently been the de facto ruler of the country against the will of the local Daimyo who had been unable to stop him because Wave was a provencial island nation with little to no resources. The bridge-builder Tazuna had in fact taken the last of the Daimyo's own funds in order to hire the genin team he had picked up.

Had he known what was going to happen that day when Kiba and Ami had stood there and demanded a better mission while Shino silently stood behind them and stoically remained silent, and Kurenai had apologized to his father who had been amused by the antics of Kurenai's more boisterous students, he would have slaughtered Tazuna where he stood that day, oppressed people or no. Kurenai's team hadn't been ready for a C-ranked mission, much less the mission they had found themselves in the middle of when they had gotten to Wave after Kurenai had made a mistake and assumed that the Demon Brothers had turned bandit and had been attacking every ninja who came along for supplies as missing-nin were wont to do on occasion since they could rarely show their faces at a shop that catered to shinobi if ever. While Kurenai had been a Jounin, and a near unmatched mistress of Genjutsu, she had been an untried and inexperienced newly-promoted Jounin and had not been a match for Momochi Zabuza, nor had her students.

Word of what had happened shortly after the team had arrived in Wave had made its way to Konoha in the beak of the swiftest of the Sparrow summons that Ami's family had gifted her upon her graduation from the Academy, which had been sent out shortly after Kurenai had ordered her students to flee with the bridge builder and stood to face Zabuza alone. The bird had vanished from existence shortly after it had arrived at Konoha's gates, signifying that it was already far too late for help to arrive even if they had left immediately.

All that was left was to avenge the fallen, and to send a message that would make any other would-be tyrant think twice before they tried to pull something like Gato had attempted and damn near succeeded in pulling off because Konoha quite frankly hadn't been paying attention.

Once Wave was dealt with, and Momochi Zabuza brought to justice, he would be returning to Konoha and to his students. Since there was currently nobody in Konoha who would admit to possessing the Sharingan, his father had left it to him to supervise the Last of the Uchiha. Also on his team was the Hyuuga girl that Kurenai had been rather fond of at one time, and a bright and talented but physically weak girl named Sakura who hadn't had the benefit of the clan training that her teammates had been given since Birth. The girl was determined to succeed and prove herself as a kunoichi however, probably because she'd spent so long being picked on before the Yamanaka girl who was one third of the new Ino-Shika-Chou team under Aburame Shibi had taken her under her wing.

He was fond of his students, but avenging Kurenai's death came first in his book.

&!&!&!&

Hinata sighed as she watched the boy in the green spandex unitard train relentlessly alongside his sensei. Had she not run into the boy who was determined to succeed despite the fact that life had handed him any number of disadvantages that would've caused a lesser person to give up before they begun, it was likely that she would've given up on life completely. As it was, she had been forced to work hard in order to be able to graduate with her yearmates after she'd begun to pull herself out of the downward spiral she'd been in and begun to focus on her schoolwork.

Because she'd been letting everything in the Academy slide, from her homework to her Taijutsu until the day she had spotted Rock Lee getting up after sparring with Neji and yelling about how he would defeat him one day no matter how much hard work it took, her cumulative score for the year had placed her firmly as Dead Last, even though she'd gotten a respectable score on her Graduation Exam.

"Why are you still watching him?" her teammate Uchiha Sasuke who'd come up behind her asked. "If Raidou-sensei catches us slacking off..."

Sighing, Hinata reluctantly turned away from Lee who was doing one-handed handstand pushups and trudged back to her own training field where she was supposed to be working on her Ninjutsu with her teammates, Sasuke glowering disapprovingly behind her the entire way. Being a girl, Sakura would've understood. Who couldn't help but be captivated by someone who possessed such spirit, heart, and determination?

"Lee again?" Sakura asked Sasuke with raised eyebrows as soon as Sasuke and Hinata arrived at the training field where the team was supposed to be practicing Chakra Control exercises and Ninjutsu until Namiashi Raido got off of his shift and dismissed them for the day.

Sakura just couldn't understand it. She ended up being placed on the only team that year that contained two kunoichi, and instead of getting another girl who was serious about her career like Ino or like Ami had been, she ended up getting a fangirl who had a crush on Rock Lee of all people. Sure, the girl seemed more determined to succeed after she'd been watching Lee train, but all the time that she spent tailing Lee was time that was taken away from said training, which meant that there was little to no actual gain as a result.

&!&!&!&

In another country, a boy named Naruto stretched after he'd released the last of the sheep he was supposed to be medicating into the pen and made his way over to where his teammates were already eating lunch. One day, he and his teammates would score a more exciting mission that wasn't just farm work, but that didn't look to be any time soon. Until then, they would work on their ninja skills and plow fields and de-worm sheep and anything else they were called on to do until it was time to go out into the field and show any idiot who dared cross Iwa who was boss.

Han was lightly snickering behind the mask of his bright red armor, having likely divined what he was thinking. The man had already ribbed him over the fact that he'd gone running from Hatake Kakashi like a coward the day before. Apparently, the man had gone looking for him after he'd run, and had run into Han in the middle of his search which had delayed the mission the Akatsuki were undertaking for the Old Man.

From what he'd heard, the Yellow Flash's insane student had wanted to talk to him. He didn't want to talk to the man though. It was bad enough that he was the son of the Yellow Flash, but to be seen talking to one of the man's students, even one who had betrayed the Leaf...

Pulling himself out of his musing since lunch was half over, he pulled out his store-bought bento and began to eat. As always, his order was a little heavy on the rice, but the people he usually went to for his lunches didn't cheat him out of any of the sides even if they were a little smaller than normal when compared to other bento they made, and they always gave him a couple inarizushi as a bonus or something, apparently thinking he might like it since he was the Kyuubi Jinchuriki. Their inarizushi was reasonably good though, so he didn't say anything about it even though inarizushi wasn't his favorite.

"They gave you too much rice again." Yuki said, peering into his lunch, which he almost guiltily noted was a great deal better than the Kujakuseki brothers' lunches, which was probably because the two of them were supporting their mother and three younger siblings on a pair of Genin salaries because their father had died the year before when one of his cave explorations had gone wrong and he'd run into poison gas rather than useful minerals or exotic animals that could be sold to foreigners for a small fortune. Considering how skilled their father had been, the only reason the Kujakuseki family had been crevice dwellers had been because the man had constantly pissed away every ryo he'd earned on booze and gambling.

"Eh, they always do that." he said before he snapped his one-time use chopsticks apart and started eating, figuring it probably had something to do with an Inari theme or something considering the inarizushi. Inari was the Kami of Rice and Foxes after all.

"And you put up with it?" Yusuke asked incredulously.

"They're better than all the other places I've been to, so yeah." he replied, remembering the cold shoulders, poor service, long wait times, cold food that was supposed to be warm and warm food that was supposed to be cold that plagued most of his visits to the local eateries, and since his favorite restaurant offered bento for the ninja on the go...

"Finish your meal." Han said, ending the discussion before either Yuki or Yusuke could ask an awkward question that would have an answer that would lead to more embarrassment for him.

He may be quiet and seemingly cold and anti-social, but he was sure that Han cared about him in his own way, and for that, he was grateful. Being a Jinchuriki was often lonely, especially since normal villagers feared that you would go on a rampage at the slightest provocation, and some Jinchuriki went mad from the way their villagers treated them. If he hadn't had Han to be there for him, or any of the other people who cared for him for that matter, he'd likely be as batshit insane as that One-tail in Suna, since the treatment he'd received here in Iwa went beyond the general fear and avoidance of a Biju container thanks to his bastard of a father.


End file.
